Purpose :
To correlate the fundus aspect recorded using a videocamera (Heine Omega 500 DV1) with the retinal response measured under anaesthesia via electroretinogram and the visual pathway examined in awake conditions by mean of visual evoked potentials (VEP).

Methods :
We examined 17 children (mean age 18 months, min 9 months, max 8 years) that were referred to our clinic for visual impairment, visual unresponsiveness, nystagmus . After pupil dilatation, all the subjects had the fundus examined under anaesthesia and recorded on a PC with a high definition camera attached to an indirect ophthalmoscope. Electroretinogram (primus DB3, Lace electronics) was subsequently recorded using erg jet corneal electrodes. Before the anesthesia, children had patterned VEP elicited with a checker alternating on a screen (winaver, biomedical Mangoni) at different spatial frequencies (120’, 60’, 15’). The patients were divided in four groups: 1) normal ERG/VEP and fundus; 2) Normal ERG, altered VEP and abnormal fundus; 3) abnormal ERG/VEP, normal fundus; 4) abnormal ERG/VEP and fundus.

Results :
In 5 children (29,41%) we found a normal ERG/VEP and fundus, 2 (11,76%) had normal ERG, and altered VEP and fundus, 4 (23,52%) altered ERG/VEP and normal fundus and 6 (35,29%, see figure 1) had ERG/VEP and fundus altered.

Conclusions :
The functional ERG and Vep exams identify more (70,57%) retinal and visual pathway diseases than the funduscopy (47,05%), i.e. the functional alteration can be detected in advance compared to the morphologic alteration. Fundus examination performed using an indirect ophthtalmoscope equipped with a videocamera provides a good and relatively inexpensive retinal phenotype characterization.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.